Existentialism. I don't know about you, but I can take it or leave it. And to succumb to it, to question the meaning of life on reaching that very point at which most of your existence has been aimed, seems to be on the bonkers side of existentialist. It seems to have cost David Duval a glittering career.

Duval car-crashed horrendously down the field yesterday, from joint fourth and heady new hope, back to nowhere, ending what conservative estimates hold to be about his 72nd comeback. He started as a contender on two over and ended as a deadbeat on 15 over; his 83 was jointly the worst round of the day. Goodnight.

In around 2000, he was easily the most convincing of the pack chasing Tiger Woods, but his notorious moment of questioning came after his triumph in winning the 2001 Open at Lytham. “A week after the Open Championship is when I went through my existentialist moment of ‘is this it’,” he has said. It was meant to be an orgasmic moment, but it merely left him drooping.

And the sad thing was that the answer was Yes. That was it. He has never won since, never made the top 10 in anything, bombed spectacularly in majors and minors and had one year (2005) when he earned roughly what a nifty weekender would have made playing his mates for beer money. He and Saturday play have been strangers, and for him to play yesterday was to make a rare cut. The man who was once No 1 arrived at this tournament alongside Kenyan Dismas Indiza at 1,087 in the world rankings.

It seems that when he questioned the meaning of life then, Duval – or those close to him – started questioning everything. His quest for answers has become, it seems, excruciating. His decline has at various times been attributed to the death of his brother, to a failed relationship, to an over-rigorous fitness regime that added muscle and weight but removed feel and touch. His putting departed. So did his long game. David Leadbetter claimed that Duval’s driver had caught the yips. One writer noted that off the tee, he now had the sense of direction of a New York taxi driver.

Another writer, noting that in desperation, the American had gone back to Puggy Blackmon, his old coach at Georgia Tech, deemed this a “retreat to the womb”. That only goes to show that Duval may have been short of good golf lately, but never of rubbish amateur psychologists with their latest theories. How can you strike sweetly with a head that has been spinning for seven years.

Yet self-analysis has not being a strong point either. Continually, he has deemed himself “one or two putts” from new momentum. “I need to get my golf swing and head back together,” he says. “I know what it takes to have greatness.” If he knew it yesterday, then it was only through the lack.

It would be ridiculous to ascribe all of yesterday’s horrors at storm-hit Birkdale to his own failings, but he began level with Padraig Harrington, his playing partner, at two over and by the 10th the gap between the pair was an incredible 11 shots.

There was never conviction in his striking, nor in that rather mincing walk on those stumpy legs. He opened with sporting horror, with treble-bogey on the first hole, and doubts were cruelly fanned. As ever these days, he began to follow a fine round (69 on Friday) with a shocker.

He was decent and straight off the first tee but was indicating furiously away to the right as soon as he hit his approach. It landed in a tiny bush, neatly in its branches and unplayable. He took a drop, hacked out way across to the rough on the other side of the green, dribbled the ball back on to the nearest portion of the green and two-putted for a gory seven.

After that, it was the equivalent of a desperately outgunned football team fulfilling the fixture. And you began to grasp why he cannot identify the problems. There are so many. He was wonky everywhere. His sand play did begin to improve, but only because of all the practice he gave himself, notably near the turn when he found sand in five consecutive holes.

At the second hole he pulled his approach to the top of a hillock on the left and could not save par; at the third his approach putt went way wide and yards past, as if he had overclubbed on his putter; again at the fourth he could not save from the sand; at the fifth he could, just about; and at the testing sixth, which Harrington played brilliantly, Duval landed in a fairway bunker, found sand again with his approach and three-putted from shortish range for a double bogey.

It was at this stage, when he was making more trips to the sand than a Blackpool donkey, that something truly awful loomed, maybe even a 90. He leaked shots at the seventh, eighth, 10th and 12th, suffering from the long break in play as the round loomed on the verge of interruption with the winds even heavier.

However, one more feature of the fallow years has been the bizarre turnaround. This is the man who opened a round of the 2006 Masters with double bogey and quintuple bogey, only to come home in 32 shots. Here, buffeted by wind and looming humiliation, he put together a defiant run of pars, and in the circumstances, there was nothing regulation about them. At least that sunglassed head was held high as he walked up the 18th.

It is seven years since he walked the same hole on a different course, on his way to the height of his sport. It was cruel that the climax felt nothing like as wondrous as it was supposed to, and what has happened since as a result must have been an agony.

Perhaps the most important thing about sporting triumph is to savour it when you are up there. It is a long and lonely baffling fall if you cannot. How marvellous if there were to be an equally baffling brilliant round today, for David Duval to taste goodness in a sporting excellence. But he will be coming from way back.

NUMBERS GAME

Hardest hole 6th, par 4, 499 yards Average 4.776

Easiest hole 17th, par 5, 572 yards Average 4.734

Longest driver Paul Casey 315.5

Most accurate driver Peter Hanson 82%

Most greens in regulation Anthony Kim 69%

Fewest putts per hole Graeme Storm 1.42